We set aside 16 weeks from 2013 and came to India. We're 4 weeks in.
I'm giving storytelling a rest for a while. My previous entries may seem to contradict themselves as we are constantly falling in and out of plans and relationships. We meet people and arrange meetings. They don't follow through and it's back to the drawing board. After our fortunate encounter with the young men at the slums last week, there have been others we have met in different colleges all over town. Prayers are being answered and The Lord is giving us more than we can manage right now! He truly has seen the work through. But you all know these stories. What now?
Discipleship.
We are a quarter of the way done and have a small contingent of benign men of peace. We don't need anything more. People want to know the vision. From the business industry all the way to ministry, in America, people like hearing the big picture explained. They want to know where we are going and want to trust that we'll get there safely. What is our vision? I may have done a poor job of articulating this early on and left some of you thinking this was an arbitrary expedition to Asia for a bored college student. Vision has never been something we have lacked.
We want this cluster of nations and people groups to know Jesus and we understand that this must first happen through discipleship.
There are many differences between Americans and Indians and I've already exhausted you with the details. The approach is different. There is a Western way of doing things and there's an Eastern way of doing things. There is also a Kingdom way of doing things. As men come to faith, their ways and our ways don't clash as much because we trudge a more narrow path together and leave our old paths behind. We aren't Indians or Americans anymore. We are Christians. I belong to that Kingdom just as much as I belong to Louisville, KY.
There is a right way of living and our Savior knows that way. Who cares if they eat with their right hand and wipe with their left? That isn't a custom I need to work them away from. Most American women wear next to nothing and we celebrate sexuality and promiscuity like no other culture has before. Lets drop the charade that one culture has it right and embrace a Kingdom culture that has no flaw and is eternal. Ushering them into that and discovering it with them will accomplish the big vision we want. Not changing certain habits that Asian people have developed over the centuries. That's trite and a waste of my time. We aren't imperialists.
So in God's Kingdom we see discipleship. Walking with a man and showing him Christ and teaching him how to be crucified as Jesus was. It is allowing leading him to repentance and watching as he interacts with the Spirit. It's showing him the truth of God's Word and lavishing its riches on him daily. Its investing time, money, effort, and love into the stock that yields a certain fruit. Will that man turn around and show Christ to another man and understand his purpose as living for the glory of God? The glory of God through discipleship is the goal. That's a global vision. I did the same exact work in America.
This is what we need prayer for. As we coax men into our fold, some reconfiguring of the heart must happen. I powerless to do that. Only God molds hearts. Prayers must be for them. Pray they can have boldness to try something different from their parents. As similar as discipleship is, they do have some factors that we don't. The cultural acceptance of Christianity isn't quite the same. But if the desire for Christ is there, discipleship is going to happen. From this pray that churches are planted and that they reach their communities in ways I never could. I can only communicate so much to this country as I am limited by language and my nationality. They are going to be better at this than I am. We just have to knock over the first few dominoes. Pray.
